


the dawning hour

by eliotkeats



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Ank'Harel, Backstory, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-19 12:12:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8207288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliotkeats/pseuds/eliotkeats
Summary: Jarett in Marquet.





	

In Ank’Harel, you can’t see the sunset over the peaked roofs and spires of the inner city. The buildings stack on top of each other, those made of newer, stronger materials built haphazardly onto older buildings. Towards the inner city, the towers rise like scrubby plants in the shade, stretching desperately towards slivers of washed-out sky tucked between jutting roof angles.    

(Jarett and a friend two years his junior scale the scaffolding erected around a half-constructed tower, and sit in companionable silence as the sky goes from blue to orange to bruise purple, the temperature dropping as night draws near. When the other boy’s face is little more than a darkened oval beneath the hood of his cloak, Jarett leans over and kisses him. His friend’s lips move against his, warm and slightly sticky beneath a thin coating of herbal salve.)

Fifteen years ago, the skyport in Ank’Harel is new, as is the novelty of enchanted vessels. The massive docks are still being built, heavy chains affixed to the wood to tether the ships. Jarett picks up extra coin working on the lower levels of construction, helping other boys his age carry water bags to the men, dark skin glistening with sweat, crawling across the half-finished docks like worker ants. He eats well during those months.

Jarett spends many afternoons darting through the marketplace, veering off at the familiar blue and brass armor picked out in the ragtag crowd. A riot of colors, patterns, and smells — everything clamoring at his senses, but he always catches sight of rich sapphire blue, the glint of brass in glaring sunlight.

He’s fresh into his sixteenth year when it happens. A member of the Merchant’s Guild, fine robes and braided beard, lies dead in a curtained booth with wine down his front mingling with blood and Jarett’s cheap blade in his gut, and Jarett’s friends worry at him until he gathers himself enough to agree to leave. Traveling by skyship is an impossibility for someone of Jarett’s kind — he’s too poor and too common to secure a spot as either a passenger or a crew member, so he leaves by caravan.  

In the desert, the sands are endless, and what isn’t sand is hard, barren plains of rock, or hard-packed dirt red as ochre. The sky curves overhead, littered with wisps of cloud. The caravan crawls forward and Jarett, seeing birds pass overhead, pictures what they must see. A dark worm, inching its way across saffron dunes shifting ceaselessly in the winds.    

He didn’t have to leave Marquet. He really didn’t. He didn't have to travel as far as Tal'Dorei, as Emon. There’s any number of sleepy border towns, villages clustered around oases scattered throughout the desert, where a grimy street kid could have disappeared and remained quite happily. But he grew up in the shadow of the Cerulean Palace, played in the dust on the streets under the watchful eyes of the Hand of Ord, stole from the marketplaces and slept in the shadows of the temples. Jarett’s a city boy at heart.  

(And besides, he had always wanted to see an ocean.) 

**Author's Note:**

> lmao this was supposed to be jarett/gilmore but jarett/my city feelings won out apparently. maybe next time.


End file.
